Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [178]
A boy entered the house. He was black and covered with the yellow dust that settled upon everything in this place. He wore a uniform of some kind, and a cap with a narrow brim, and no shoes. Luke Honey guessed his age at eleven or twelve, although his face was worn, the flesh creased around his mouth, and his eyes suggested sullen apathy born of wisdom. Here, on the edge of a wasteland, even the children appeared weathered and aged. Perhaps that was how he himself appeared now that he’d lived on the plains and in the jungles for seven years. Perhaps the land had chiseled and filed him down too. He didn’t know because he seldom glanced at the mirror anymore. On the other hand, there were some, such as a Boer and another renowned hunter from Canada Luke Honey had accompanied on many safaris, who seemed stronger, more vibrant with each passing season, as if the dust and the heat, the cloying jungle rot and the blood they spilled fed them, bred into them a savage vitality.
The boy handed him a telegram in a stiff white envelope with fingerprints all over it. Luke Honey gave him a fifty-cent piece and the boy left. Luke Honey tossed the envelope on the table. He struck a match with his thumbnail and lighted a cigarette. The light coming through the window began to thicken. Orange shadows tinged black slid across the wall of the cantina. He poured a glass of whiskey and drank it in a gulp. He poured another and set it aside. The cockroach fled under the edge of the table.
Two women descended the stairs. White women, perhaps English, certainly foreign travelers. They wore heavy Victorian dresses, equally staid bonnets, and sheer veils. The younger of the pair inclined her head toward Luke Honey as she passed. Her lips were thinned in disapproval. She and her companion opened the door and walked though its rectangle of shimmering brilliance into the furnace. The door swung shut.
Clerk Galtero folded the newspaper and placed it under the counter. He tipped his glass toward Luke Honey in a sardonic toast. “The ladies complained about you. You make noise in your room at night, the younger one says. You cry out, like a man in delirium. The walls are thin and she cannot sleep, so she complains to me.”
“Oh. Is the other one deaf, then?” Luke Honey smoked his cigarette with the corner of his mouth. He sliced open the envelope with a pocketknife and unfolded the telegram and read its contents. The letter was an invitation from one Mr. Liam Welloc Esquire to take part in an annual private hunt in Washington State. The hunt occurred on remote ancestral property, its guests designated by some arcane combination of pedigree and long-standing associations with the host, or by virtue of notoriety in hunting circles. The telegram chilled the sweat trickling down his face. Luke Honey was not a particularly superstitious man; nonetheless, this missive called with an eerie intimacy and struck a chord deep within him, awakened an instinctive dread that fate beckoned across the years, the bloody plains and darkened seas, to claim him.
He stuck the telegram into his shirt pocket, then drank his whiskey. He poured another shot and lighted another cigarette and stared at the window. The light darkened to purple and the wall faded, was almost invisible. “I have nightmares. Give the ladies my apologies.” He’d lived in the boardinghouse for three weeks, and this was the second time he and Clerk Galtero had exchanged more than a word in passing. Galtero’s brother Enrique managed the place in the evening. Luke Honey hadn’t spoken to him much either. After years in the wilderness, he usually talked to himself.
Clerk Galtero spilled the dregs of water on the floor and walked over with his queer, hitching step and poured the glass full of Luke Honey’s whiskey. He sat in one